I Hope I Can Forget You, After You Go

Not many bands can have every girl in the crowd singing along to their "misgoynistic" lyrics,

"i beat my woman, just to keep her in line / i'd leave my woman, but she comes
back every time"

but the Dead Flags are not one of many! they are Billy "the voice" Fitzgerald on vocals, Dave "Ice" Power on falsetto background vocals & shouts and also bass, Kevin Lowry on drums, and especially for us tonight the band also featured the inimitable Johnny Fun on Xylophone (yes, that is really his name- i asked.) and a bongo player whose name i could not hear over the roar of the 100-odd ruffians present at the gig tonight. WHAT A SHOW! A regular perfomer at the 'Open Mic' held every Monday night in Bar Eile, Fitzgerald has earned himself a reputation for reputable performances, tonight attracting a full-capacity-plus-a-few-more-probably crowd to McGarrigles.

the setlist included many f$%!ing awesome tunes, including "After You're Gone", "Woman", "Girls", "Here be Love", "Best Friend's Girl" and "How Long". The wordical genius of Fitzgerald's lyrics never failed to impress, or make us all blush, rhyming "indie chick" with "my dick". Every song is a passionate testament to scorned lovers, fearless unfaithfulness and the pain and suffering and sexual encounters that boys and girls everywhere experience in the search of their own indie chick/boy. Billy doesn't have that middle knickname "the voice" for nothing. those strained neck muscles made me squirm in my seat (a very uncomfortable bar stool...but i had a great front-and-centre view, of the bulging neck muscles, yay!)

Very super opening act was Cillian O'Kelley, who is on the internets, he says. www.somethingsomething/cillianonline.com. (sorry). He says there are photographs. The crowd was lit on fire byh O'Kelly with his performance of "Mouse of the Rising Sun" and other songs, one in particular inspired by a review which reviewed Cillian as "feeling like you're being taken from behind by Salvador Dali." I could never come up with anything like that. Cillian sings, writes and plays real good. How's dat? Also, there was a song in honour of Keifer Sutherland's ability to not pee in "24", and a rather unforgettable rendition of "I'm Keeping Your Poop", originally by Hayseed Dixie. No lock of hair, or lip-stick stained coffee mug would do??...

the Dead Flags opened their set for us tonight with a short film of their shenanigans - tonight it was sort of a goodbye gig as the boys are all going off to university to forget how to play the guitar, further enhance their embittered, ironical view of the world and leave us all a bit sad that they're not around. But we have the CD to listen to, with "not final versions of the songs hence the, at times, crappy quality."

Appropriately enough after all those tales of love, sex, heartache and girl-hating, the boys finished up their set with "Love Shack" by the B52's. Bringing a gorgeous girl on-stage to help with the vocals, they got everybody up off their uncomfortable bar stools to shimmy down to their last song ever, maybe. Despite the heat (only because there were so many people!) the understaffed bar, and the disruption in the form of one drunken middle-eastern political activist, this night was definitely not dead for the Dead Flags.

i hope we don't forget the Dead Flags, and i hope that they come back to us.